How can God be unimaginable?

[dattaswami]

How can God be unimaginable?

 

If a student comes and asks the preacher “What is God?” and the preacher says, “God is Unimaginable”; then the student asks again “How God created this world?” and the preacher says, “The process of creation is unimaginable”; the student will think that the preacher does not know the answers for his questions and will leave the preacher. This is the practical problem in revealing the absolute truth. The preacher should say the answers in positive way and the answers should satisfy the logical faculty of the student. Now you should analyze the basis of such logical faculty of the student. The basis is the observation of this world containing all imaginable items only. Hence all his logic is based on the observation of the nature of imaginable items and the relationships between the imaginable items only. This means that the preacher should say that God is an imaginable item and the imaginable process of generation of the imaginable world from imaginable God is in imaginable way only. Every sentence of the preacher should be imaginable to the student and then only the student gets satisfied.

 

The introduction of the word “Unimaginable” by the preacher leads the student to think that the preacher is ignorant. Hence to satisfy the student and to solve this practical problem, the preacher has to make certain assumptions and should preach about God through hypothesis only and not through real theory.

 

The reality is that the unimaginable God created the world through unimaginable way.

 

But to satisfy the student the hypothesis introduced here is that God is pure awareness. Here the infinite ocean of pure awareness is an assumption created because there is no proof of such ocean of awareness anywhere because you can find only the infinite ocean of inert energy. The infinite ocean of awareness is created by the preacher and such ocean charged by God can be treated as God Himself like the live wire treated as current. Now the student is satisfied.

 

Similarly, the creation of world from God should be also done through the imaginable way answering all the objections through imaginable ways only. This makes again the creation of another assumption for the process of creating the world by God. The assumption here is that a second unimaginable item called as the power of God is created which is modified into the world. Since the power is negligible, the world is negligible and maintains the existence of single God or Brahman. It is like the dream of a person created by the modification of the mind and the mind is negligible compared to the materialistic person. In course of time to satisfy the logic of students, changes in the hypothesis are made by Ramanuja and Madhva who introduced the assumption of a separate material, which is modified as the world without any connection to God.

 

The hypothetical assumptions can be varied for the sake of preaching the truth to the students in order to satisfy their logic developed from the observation of the world containing only imaginable items. This does not mean that the theories are different.

 

There is only one real theory that both God and the link between God and world are unimaginable.

 

But the preaching requires complete elimination of the word unimaginable and the whole preaching should continue with the assumptions of imaginable items and imaginable relationships between those imaginable items only. In such case all the assumptions are not true at all in the absolute sense. In such case you need not misunderstand that the three Acharyas are differing from each other with different theories of truth. The same truth is explained in different ways with different created assumptions of hypothesis for the sake of understanding of various types of mentalities of the students which are always based on the constant observation of imaginable items only (Ekam Sat Viprah bahudha vadanti…..Veda).

 

The final truth is known to Anjaneya who did not like to preach the truth through assumptions and hence kept silent in preaching. He showed the essence of all the divine knowledge through action (Karma) only because Karma can only be real and fruitful. His recognition of contemporary human incarnation and practical service to Him is the essence of the message of Anjaneya. For those who cannot accept the human incarnation, Shankara preached the divine knowledge with several assumptions and the most powerful assumption is that the soul itself is God. Shankara preached atheists and this powerful assumption attracted them to come and at least here the subject. All the Acharayas followed this method of preaching by assumptions to various levels of students who are based on the logic of imaginable items only.

 

At the Lotus Feet of His Holiness Sri Dattaswami

 

Anil Antony

 

www.universal-spirituality.org

Universal Spirituality for World Peace

antonyanil@universal-spirituality.org